They come unseen

After several unconfirmed reports of misterious disturbances and naval encounters along the Atlantic Ocean in the Grand Banks area were officially disregarded, both United States and Soviet Union showed their concern over the Barents Sea area. Unofficial reports indicated the presence of polar military bases which raised tension between NATO and the Warsaw Pact, conducting on alleged escalation and conduction of naval operations.

But according to repeated statements by both Soviet and American Governments, nothing of what you are about to see...

Ever happened.

 

 

Boardgame day! They come unseen is a different kind of stuff from what I am used to. It's quite a strategy boardgame and it's all about deceiving and placing your submarines wherever the enemy expects less...

Designed by a retired submarine officer, the game takes place in some kind of Cold War scenario on the Barents Sea, where the Soviet Union has placed several different stations. Two NATO-led submarines are to infiltrate and destroy them. But beware! The Soviets will of course defend their stations...

First thing that will call your attention is the very display of the board. Well, boards. You will have the main board, where action will be seen and Soviet player will deploy his ships and stuff... And the NATO player will have a smaller replica of the board, which only he is allowed to see, where he'll keep track of the movement of his submarines. This way, the submarines will be moving along and the defender will never have the certainty of where they are.

 

These are the boards. I will play the NATO submarines

 

The different colours represent different depths. 250 ft., 450 ft. and 650 ft. Submarines can dive up to 200, 400 or 600 ft, consuming energy on the process. When in the 250 ft. areas, they must move slower (shallow waters are always dangerous, you know!)

Submarines can move and execute different actions each turn. They can attack a Soviet station (when in the tile), they can lay mines for the enemy to hit them or they can go up to periscope depth and snort (i.e., barely move and let the batteries recharge). They will win the game if they get to destroy four out of the six ice-stations (determined randomly before the game).

The NATO display board, submarines are on their way!

 The faster they move, the faster the battery will empty, so you have to be very careful about how you move and when to recharge.

The unaware Soviet display board

Soviets have two kind of vessels, two destroyers (which will try to search and destroy the submarines before they achieve their goal) and three supply ships, which will be moving ammo and fuel through the ice-stations, where the destroyers can harbor to resupply; besides, they can also resupply by getting adjacent to one of these ships.

 Destroyers can make a sonar sweep in order to locate the subs:

 

Bing... bing... bing...

If a submarine is under any of the tiles covered by the sonar, the player must tell the Soviets in which quadrant, but nothing else (hence the colours). No contact this turn...

Both subs moved along the shore line towards their targets (the blue one is covered by my own shadow, nuts!)

Next turn the Soviets moved a destroyer closer to Charlie Station and the sonar sweep offered some juicy stuff. Contact red. Contact red. (That's the code to say that there was a contact on the red quadrant). The destroyer then sprung some mortar bombs off:

 

No, those are not sugar lumps

The Soviet player lays the bombs on any tiles he feel. He sets them on two depth levels at will (again, hence the colours). Being on a 250 ft. area, he can only release them at 200 ft. or surface. White ones were at 200 ft. and black ones were at surface. This time, the sub was at periscope depth, so we had a mortar bomb on the right tile, but wrong depth. That means the blue sub got some damage, but was still operational.
Fun thing is that the Soviet player still doesn't know for sure on which tile was the sub, so he just makes an educated guess and places a marker...

Just to get an idea of the whereabouts

 

Next turn the Soviets really put all their effort in chasing the subs. Yellow destroyer tried to close access to Charlie ice-station, while the red one ressuplied close to Alfa.

 

No contact, tovarich! Where are those subs?

Close, really close, but out of range

 
If you look (really close) the pic above, you'll see the green sub sneaked its way into Alfa Station just on the verge of detection range. So it got the station destroyed! I got the card associated to my target and...

Ouch! Some nasty secondary effects!

 

Right, all fuel from Station Echo just went! Really hard strike for the Soviet player, as it was the main warehouse at the moment. From now on, the destroyers will have to be really careful about the fuel they use!!

Both destroyers actively search for the subs...

But on the tiny board you can see they both are slippery! Green one leaves Alfa and blue gets into Charlie

So Charlie Station was also destroyed. NATO subs still had to strike Bravo and Foxtrot (once again, the defender isn't really sure of which are the targets of the attacker, that can drive him crazy, having to defend them all!)

 

Green sub barely avoids the sonar, blue gets detected but escapes unharmed

Then the Soviets focused in detecting the green sub, while the vessel had long gone from Alfa and was heading to unprotected Bravo. They also protected Foxtrot, but blue sub went up to periscope depth and recharged, waiting for their chance to strike...

 

This is what the Soviet player saw...

...but this was what the NATO player was doing

Soviets tried to defend Delta and Echo, which happened to be a terrible mistake, as the NATO targets were in fact Bravo and Foxtrot...

Trying to defend the wrong outposts...

While Bravo station was destroyed and Foxtrot was about to be...

Then it all was up to a few tactical decisions. Soviets moved their destroyers. Contact red!:

Mortar bombs! If you check, none of them hit the sub

The desperate defender then took a calculated risk. Knowing than none of the mortar bombs had hit the sub, the captain ordered 'full speed ahead!'. He had reached the right conclusion, the NATO sub had to be recharging at periscope depth, and there was little space for it to be but in X32 tile. So he really rammed into the sub... Hitting it so hard that it sunk!

Ke-rrunch!

 

  (Note: We made a mistake here. This can only happen if the submarine is completely at surface level, which is only likely to happen if it has run out of battery and needs to surface. But well, for the sake of this report let's assume that this event happened, for in the end it added much more tension to the game!)

Slowly moving at periscope depth

Soviets will not let a single tuna sneak in!

Contact Purple! Mortar bombs!

Right tile, wrong depth. Near-miss

Almost there, almost there...

We won't let that submarine escape! Contact red! Go for it!

The sub took another near miss (which turned into a full hit for gae purposes; a sub can take three direct hits before sinking). Anyway, it was too close to its target to miss it...

And the last target is engaged and destroyed

 

 

So NATO victory, the ice-stations have been neutralized and the Soviet plans have been severely hampered. But remember, the official version is that only fishing boats were reported to sail those days along these latitudes...

The game is incredibly tactical and interesting, with lots of tense situations and fun all over. Looks realistic enough within the range of abstraction (which, of course, is high); as it was our first game we disregarded some special rules, but enough to say there are weather rules regarding sea currents and stuff. I have never sailed the Barents Sea, but I bet that's a major issue there!
In my opinion, it is way too unbalanced in favour of the submarine side, which in fact makes total sense and reflects the strategic horror of facing this kind of irregular warfare. The Soviet player in fact has little chance to stop the submarines, which are a real nightmare, the enemy never knowing for sure where the hell they are. I'm afraid my opponent made a mistake that costed him the game. Right after destroying Alfa base, my sub sailed out of the area, and the Soviet destroyer that arrived next turn skipped my escape route for just one tile. So he focused in chasing a ghost that had long went away. That conditioned him (as well as the fact of having little fuel reserve) and gave me the definite advantage.
If I was to say any word against the game, it only could be about the fact of having only one scenario. It's of course replayable and will present new challenges every game, but after some time players may find it repetitive. Anyway, making homemade scenarios shouldn't be that difficult. A little bit laborious maybe, but totally rewarding.

So this is it. Deploy your units, play your Red October OST and just enjoy!

Lord Macragge revisited (Pt. 5, the final result)

Time to put this project to an end! With all the minis finished, I just had to take care of the hall itself. I could make this as easy or as complicated as I wanted. If you know me you already know the answer... The easy way it is :P

I was suggested to use some wooden pieces as columns and stuff. The idea is nice, I got it under consideration, but that would have forced me to design some base for them. Naah, just these pieces of foamboard, they'll have to be enough...

 

Yup, after all the converting work, I'm risking it all with this lousy approach

 

Trust me, I know what I'm doing. Not only it is easier (which it is!), it also gives all the visual attention to the minis. So no tapestry, carpets or anything else. I'll just keep it the way of the original vignette.

Some cunning cuts here and there and this is gonna be all

For the floor I just repeated the checkered pattern I used for the original vignette:

 

How about a nice game of chess?

 

The same goes for the wall:

Another brick in the wall

OK, now I faced a problem. The standard bearer has quite a pose. His left foot is on a piece of rubble. I thought I could save that part using two levels on the floor, but the piece of foamboard is way too high for that. What could I do then? Well, use your imagination, Suber, use your imagination...

 

The skull comes from the Scouts kit, I believe. The rest is just greenstuff

Right, a Genestealer corpse. Why oh why, I hear you wonder. The illustration of yore (WD 97?) shows Tyranids trophies on the room:

We can skip some details for this vignette...

So well, I thought it could be appropiate, and honestly, I couldn't think of any other motif to justify that standing pose :D

So the vignette finally looks like this:

We are posing for the cover of our new album

 

You can compare both the original and the reinterpretation:

Man, it's the same vignette but on steroids!

Well, this is all I have been able to achieve out of these minis and my skills! It's been a fun process, I must say, from the inception of the idea coming out from the dead marine to this vignette with four converted minis. I think I could have added some more stuff to the wall, it looks too plain. But for the moment I will call this complete and move on other projects. Hey, you never know, maybe in a couple of years I make another reinterpretation and recreate the whole throne room and the Fortress of Hera :D

Old stuff see the light

Sometimes you get the chance to know some real nice people over the net. May it be on the forums, or maybe other fellow bloggers, this hobby world is really full of great guys, or at least I've been lucky enough to find such people!

But from time to time you even get to know some exceptional people. Guys on such good vibes who make this painting/gaming/whatever world a pleasant experience. On such a basis you can fully tell this tiny soldiers stuff totally makes sense, it's all about good karma.

Most definitely one of these people is Cheetor from Sho3box. Not only he's an incredibly creative (and talented!) artist, he's also a generous gentleman! We have exchanged some stuff in the past, but the latest thing I got from him was this set:

The Previously Unreleased Rogue Trader minis, available since last BOYL 15 event

Wowzers. Man, this is great. Thank you very much for the gift. I cannot but say I was moved by this gesture. Unfortunately it's not been until now that I've been able to get my brushes on them. You may have seen some of them painted on the net, but let me bring my own particular version. First of all, the Administratum clerk:

The clerk who spends too much time alone with himself

I went classic on this one. Black robes as the fluff dictates, with some touches of white: mainly the checkers, but I toyed with the two stripes on his chest as a rank insignia within the Adeptus Administratum. I also painted the Administratum emblem on the cloak (getting that tiny "a" inside was a pain in the ass, believe me).

For the rest... well, long story short, I just decided them to be local law enforcers for my Besenval setting. So they would be the local bailiffs. In order not to mess them with my Arbites, I painted them brown and white:

Officer Conehead

Ouch. Only now in the pics I realize I haven't highlighted the eye glasses

A mix between the sheriff and a Cylon

I'm an astronauuut

The mandatory group pic:

There! The guy who misarchived the file run over there! Go get him!

They are sweet minis, they totally catch the essence of the old days; if you ever get the chance to get them, don't let it go, they are pure love! Thanks again, Cheetor, I'll try them to get on a game as soon as I can!

Lord Macragge revisited (Pt. 4, minis finished)

Some more progress on this! As I told last week, what I was missing here was a proper, decent standard bearer, to show off and sing the glory of the Ultrablah blah blah. No, I mean it. Any throne room worth of the name deserves a nice touch of colour. I simply got the Standard Bearer from the Calgar retinue again.

My starting point

I had already taken that original awful helmet off. I hadn't tried before on the bodyguards, but it was easier on this one, so I had to do it. That also made everything easier now ;)

I removed the head again and used a helmet, just to give coherence to the whole group. Also had to reposition the sword arm, it would be a little bit ankward having the guy pointing wherever while his mates were watching over the boss.

The conversion

I tried to save as much as I could from the original brushwork on the Standard. I saved the scrolls and the lower part, but repainted all the rest:

Behold the power of oldschool painting!

So you can see the final take on the minis. The style is quite homogeneous on the whole group:

No matter how colourful I look, my pose says I'm tired

I said no autographs from the boss

I wanted to be the Standard Bearer, but all I got was this stupid halberd

Well, now that I have the characters, I only need the environment. As I need to move on, I think I'll take the easy approach. The final stage in a few days!

Twin Titans

Sorry, no Halloween special over here, just regular updates (which is more than I can say lately, so I'm quite happy with that!). I've managed to expand my Legio (which begins to need a proper name!). I got two Reaver Titans on eBay:

 

Decent price for them among lots of eBay crazyness

I stripped them and begun the whole assembling & painting process from the beginning.

In the usual colours, you know

I'll save you the rest. As you can see, I used blue for the main body and some creamy white here and there for heads and weapons. This is the final result:

 

Hewey and Louie, looking for Dewey

 

I followed the path of the Imperator, so no gold at all, but black ornaments. That darkens the global view a little but not too much, I hope. I also used the white stripes on the shoulderpad to create a common theme with the Warlord, so they may look kind of similar.

The happy family so far

The names for these will be Venator Intrepidus ("Fearless Hunter") and Tonitrus Hastam ("Thunderspear"). For the Legio itself... What do you think about Legio Capitolina? Too mild? I kinda like it, sounds reminiscently classic. I think I'll take that for the moment as a provisional name until I come with something better. I may develop some background for this, hmmm.

Of course what I should get now is a couple of Warhounds. Classic models can be easily found at decent prices, but I really would like to spot some Lucius pattern Warhounds (i.e., modern ones), so they would look more like the Warlord and would make me have a more coherent Legio. Yes, by mixing patterns, I know, sounds just the opposite; but otherwise whay I would have is a Legio made of similar models and then just a single Titan totally out of place. I don't know, I may as well buying a mix of all Warhound models, only time will tell...